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gh0stpinballa posted:you guys brought hillary into it but go off i guess. lol Volkerball is just someone who posts itt, you can see a post of his earlier on this page (no offense meant Volkerball,  ). That line was meant to insult you by implying a liberal interventionist tricked you into thinking intervention was inevitable, even though actual US policymakers had little interest. Obviously I do think the US intervened in Syria. If I seemed hostile its because I hate the sort of rhetorical style you were using, in which you tried to simplify the many conflicting voices inside the "humanitarian contingent" into a single monolithic position. I find in my experience this kind of framing is mostly used to inflame a sense of identity, an us vs them mentality, rather than to honestly break down and understand the debates of the time and what was really driving policy. If I see someone using a rhetorical frame that I think is based on emotion or dishonest I reflexively challenge that frame. You think there was a clear united message at that time? I remember it too, I read FP, and I remember there was lots of disagreement, and I also remember who won the argument. i may have been overly hostile I admit, as looking back at your posts you are actually asking why that message failed, so you probably aren't literally saying everyone was united behind that position. Typically I find selection bias usually explains why we sometimes remember certain groups as monolithic when they weren't. You remember what Charles Lister said because it provoked a strong reaction, but forget the bland statements you kinda sorta agreed with. You also probably had more exposure to secular humanitarians than Christian humanitarians. If you read op-eds in places like the Christian Science Monitor, they tended to be much more suspicious of the Syrian opposition and much more concerned with the fate of Christian minorities in opposition areas.
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Jun 23, 2019 18:58
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gh0stpinballa posted:you guys brought hillary into it but go off i guess. Enjoy these, the last precious moments of your life before you became acquainted with volkerball and his opinions.
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Jun 23, 2019 19:04
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For the love of god Squalid, log off. you've picked a fight with like 3 people for the crime of being nuanced in the last couple pages. go outside ffs
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Jun 23, 2019 19:36
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Something I think really needs to be taken into account about potential war with Iran is that we have a lot of bases in Afghanistan well within range of Iranian TBMs that lack any sort of TBM defense. We could probably swat most of the scuds launched at 5th fleet in Bahrain and other large gulf bases out of the air with aegis and patriot, but nothing we have in Afghanistan has that sort of anti missile protection. A relative handful of scuds hitting Kandahar and Bagram could inflict huge damage on our forces there, including taking out lots of strike fighters, heavy lift jets, and other high value targets. If they saturated the bases they could kill hundreds or thousands of US troops.
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Jun 23, 2019 19:43
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A big flaming stink posted:For the love of god Squalid, log off. Nuance? In the middle east thread? If you don't like it get the gently caress out, its kind of a mainstay in the region.
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Jun 23, 2019 20:52
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Helsing posted:Enjoy these, the last precious moments of your life before you became acquainted with volkerball and his opinions. He said to the guy posting reddit talking points.
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Jun 23, 2019 21:00
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fair play squalid, i feel like i understand your position more now.
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Jun 23, 2019 21:57
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Volkerball posted:He said to the guy posting reddit talking points. pal simply recognising that there was a well financed PR campaign aimed at galvanising support for intervention, and discussing some potential reasons for why it failed, in addition to how media coverage of the conflict compares with 2011 - 2016/7, is hardly "posting reddit talking points", nor indicative of what my overall opinion of the war itself is. anyhow, i don't know if you're one of those hysterics who automatically labels people an assadist just because they happen to recognise that nusra, HTS etc are the most influential "rebel" groups now, but just in case you are, i am pre-emptively saying knock it off. either there is mutual respect and room for diverse and nuanced discussion, or this conversation is over.
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Jun 23, 2019 22:06
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idlib is a bastion of freedom and democracy and you are doing an assadism to me if you don't agree
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Jun 23, 2019 22:48
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This thread's quality will improve when something happens with Iran again.
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Jun 23, 2019 22:54
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Grouchio posted:This thread's quality will improve when something happens with Iran again. Unable to do your homework until it does?
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Jun 23, 2019 23:00
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p sure grouchio finally graduated and it's now that tab871 dude who is in here asking his homework questions
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Jun 23, 2019 23:02
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Herstory Begins Now posted:p sure grouchio finally graduated and it's now that tab871 dude who is in here asking his homework questions
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Jun 23, 2019 23:35
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Herstory Begins Now posted:p sure grouchio finally graduated and it's now that tab871 dude who is in here asking his homework questions So basically groucho structured all his posts into critical thinking questions because its all he has done for years
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Jun 23, 2019 23:48
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gh0stpinballa posted:pal simply recognising that there was a well financed PR campaign aimed at galvanising support for intervention, and discussing some potential reasons for why it failed, in addition to how media coverage of the conflict compares with 2011 - 2016/7, is hardly "posting reddit talking points", nor indicative of what my overall opinion of the war itself is. anyhow, i don't know if you're one of those hysterics who automatically labels people an assadist just because they happen to recognise that nusra, HTS etc are the most influential "rebel" groups now, but just in case you are, i am pre-emptively saying knock it off. Mocking a desperate mother and her child, and joking about how every third building in Idlib is a hospital when MSF stopped providing coordinates of their hospitals to Syrian and Russian authorities due to the incessant, deliberate attacks on medical infrastructure in Syria, is peak reddit actually, and is a far cry from simply recognizing jihadists are the most influential militants in Syria at this point. Maybe if you didn't unquestioningly repeat Syrian and Russian propaganda about the war and its victims, nobody would have labeled you as a supporter of theirs.
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Jun 24, 2019 02:23
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look volkerball those were terrorist hospitals full of terrorist innocent children and terrorist ambulance drivers, okay
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Jun 24, 2019 02:39
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https://twitter.com/SecPompeo/status/1142972685120675840 This guy's map? no sick lines, no green tint, nothing! It looked like he just drew it on a piece of paper. Where are the google map overlays?! 
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Jun 24, 2019 02:55
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Good news from Istanbul? https://twitter.com/laurapitel/status/1142840151309205510
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Jun 24, 2019 03:00
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Good news from Istanbul? Lets see. -- Also interesting to see a president who says "150 dead? Too many, no strike".
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Jun 24, 2019 04:13
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WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:Also interesting to see a president who says "150 dead? Too many, no strike". It was smart of him to say that because it makes cheap date anti-imperialists horny for Trump, but the argument that seems to have prevailed is that getting into a new war in the Middle East would be bad for his reelection chances.
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Jun 24, 2019 06:28
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Sinteres posted:It was smart of him to say that because it makes cheap date anti-imperialists horny for Trump, but the argument that seems to have prevailed is that getting into a new war in the Middle East would be bad for his reelection chances. Id rather have good decisions about loss of life for bad reasons than bad decisions about loss of life for good reasons. When is the last time the US had a preident who said loss of life too great no strikes instead of listening to JCs?kennedy?
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Jun 24, 2019 07:05
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It depends how you parse "don't do stupid poo poo"
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Jun 24, 2019 07:26
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Good news from Istanbul? Besiktas was nuts last night. If my SO can get around file size limits I'll post some videos of a bunch of ecstatic turks singing. I was in Adana for last years elections and it was like the entire country's dog had died, nice to see something happy happen in this dumb country. On the ground opinion of a bunch of CHP folks is that AKP knew they were gonna lose again and just needed time to clean things up from their massive grifting operations.
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Jun 24, 2019 07:52
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WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:Id rather have good decisions about loss of life for bad reasons than bad decisions about loss of life for good reasons. Yeah, but I have zero confidence in Trump keeping up the "good decisions" when it was his previous bad decisions that brought this situation about. It's like, "okay, Trump set the house on fire, but at the last minute he didn't decide to lock the dog in, because he was afraid of going back into the burning house with it, so hurray for Trump saving the dog! From the murder he was planning! The house is still on fire, mind."
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Jun 24, 2019 08:00
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Volkerball posted:Mocking a desperate mother and her child, and joking about how every third building in Idlib is a hospital when MSF stopped providing coordinates of their hospitals to Syrian and Russian authorities due to the incessant, deliberate attacks on medical infrastructure in Syria, is peak reddit actually, and is a far cry from simply recognizing jihadists are the most influential militants in Syria at this point. Maybe if you didn't unquestioningly repeat Syrian and Russian propaganda about the war and its victims, nobody would have labeled you as a supporter of theirs. mocking the farcical exploitative psychopaths who made a mockery of the mother and child's suffering with a transparently fraudulent twitter account designed to drump up support for a further western escalation of the conflict =/= mocking the mother and child. i also didn't joke about anything to do with hospitals in idlib, i simply highlighted that claiming every other bombed building is a hospital is a pretty standard PR tactic in wars. i will freely admit the "rebels" aren't doing anything particularly unique or evil here, altho this should have been obvious. anyway i was hoping to discuss PR tactics and their effectiveness in syria, if we must pause the conversation at the beginning and end of every sentence to wail and lament and curse assad until you are sufficiently satisfied i am not an fsb or assadist psy op, i am afraid it won't make for a particularly worthwhile discussion. take it as a given that i am not a fan of war crimes.
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Jun 24, 2019 11:09
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The fact that Trump called off a punitive bombing raid because he was concerned about the body count is unequivocally a good thing. Don't let your hate of the man twist you into embarrassing contrivances because you can't stand the fact that he made a good decision for once.
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Jun 24, 2019 13:17
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Cat Mattress posted:Yeah, but I have zero confidence in Trump keeping up the "good decisions" when it was his previous bad decisions that brought this situation about. so iranians are the dog in this analogy and the house is what
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Jun 24, 2019 13:29
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so how much of a self-own was the "cyber-attack"? seems to me that warning the iranians that their defense systems are vulnerable will lead them to plug those security flaws for when/if the warmongers succeed in getting their war with iran?
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Jun 24, 2019 13:33
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Cat Mattress posted:Yeah, but I have zero confidence in Trump keeping up the "good decisions" when it was his previous bad decisions that brought this situation about. This analogy also applies to Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis, so it's not as if Trump is actually an outlier.
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Jun 24, 2019 13:43
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Don't mind me, I just want to talk about abstract PR tactics, you see I'm a scholar of PR tactics, just love talking about PR tactics, you know PR tactics are the best, like those fake hospitals those psycho islamo fascist "rebels" in Idlib were using to besmirch the Assad government that was only liberating people from islamo fascists, did I mention that PR tactics are a super interesting subject?
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Jun 24, 2019 13:52
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Flayer posted:The fact that Trump called off a punitive bombing raid because he was concerned about the body count is unequivocally a good thing. Don't let your hate of the man twist you into embarrassing contrivances because you can't stand the fact that he made a good decision for once. That's not a fact, though. That's just what he said. He's a compulsive liar and he's already changed his story on this. Who the gently caress knows what actually happened? We do know he withdrew the US from a deal, that was constructed to reduce tensions to the point where things would even get to the point of contemplating such an attack. That's an actual fact.
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Jun 24, 2019 13:53
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gh0stpinballa posted:mocking the farcical exploitative psychopaths who made a mockery of the mother and child's suffering with a transparently fraudulent twitter account designed to drump up support for a further western escalation of the conflict =/= mocking the mother and child. "I really like PR tactical discussions" A child gassed by Assad foams at the mouth and dies. "You see, someone will photograph this and claim a hospital was hit, when in fact it was the DMV" A man missing his left arm stumbles out of the wreckage. "See, and this man is not even dead! But the pernicious PR propaganda of the Jihadists shall call him a casualty!"
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Jun 24, 2019 14:29
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double nine posted:so how much of a self-own was the "cyber-attack"? seems to me that warning the iranians that their defense systems are vulnerable will lead them to plug those security flaws for when/if the warmongers succeed in getting their war with iran? If the reports of planes being in the air when the attack orders were cancelled were true, it seems plausible that the electronic attack was launched to provide them cover. Then when the actual attack never happened, the narrative turned into "well actually we just wanted to do the cyber" rather than "well actually we hosed up and wasted resources."
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Jun 24, 2019 15:51
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The Liberal/Liberal Warhawk love affair with hardline Sunni Islamists has always struck me as a little strange. I guess it’s progressive to support....Al-Qaeda and Erdogan. Um, sure. I look forward to articles in Liberal publications such as “Why the Armenian Genocide was woke”, “10 reasons why invading the Safavid stronghold will bring about world peace” and “Actually, Iran and Assad created ISIS in order to control Syria”. Frond fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Jun 24, 2019 |
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Jun 24, 2019 15:54
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Oh wait that last one has been published already.
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Jun 24, 2019 15:55
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Frond posted:Oh wait that last one has been published already. To Ensure Peace In The Middle East We Must Bring Back The Shah
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Jun 24, 2019 16:24
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Frond posted:The Liberal/Liberal Warhawk love affair with hardline Sunni Islamists has always struck me as a little strange. I guess it’s progressive to support....Al-Qaeda and Erdogan. Um, sure. It's just basic anti-communism.
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Jun 24, 2019 17:53
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We must secure an existence for our future sassanian children
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Jun 24, 2019 17:57
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Unimpressed posted:Don't mind me, I just want to talk about abstract PR tactics, you see I'm a scholar of PR tactics, just love talking about PR tactics, you know PR tactics are the best, like those fake hospitals those psycho islamo fascist "rebels" in Idlib were using to besmirch the Assad government that was only liberating people from islamo fascists, did I mention that PR tactics are a super interesting subject? appreciate you are deploying absurdist humour because you feel angry and self-righteous but it's not cool to throw around a word like "islamofascist" because you feel like being mad gives you the right to. it's a super offensive term and you are furiously savaging things you have imagined you've read. like bill maher. that's not good my friend.
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Jun 24, 2019 20:27
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WoodrowSkillson posted:A child gassed by Assad foams at the mouth and dies. who has actually said any of this? i would suggest you and unimpressed check out some of alex thomson's superb dispatches from aleppo and other areas in syria, which he does for channel 4 in the uk, hardly a radical hotbed of militant assadism. and i would also recommend excellent long form pieces such as "aleppo after the fall", published in the new york times in 2017 (hopefully the NYT isn't too putinist for you). in both cases we are given numerous firsthand accounts of what exactly life is like living under the rule of the various hardline islamist gangs in syria, who are beyond a doubt now the most influential anti-government force. as you might expect, it is brutal, unjust, and the gangs commit various atrocities for minor infractions and express genocidal sentiment towards minority communities. our understanding of the conflict as something much more complex than bad government vs. plucky "rebels" is subsequently enhanced. really can't commend them enough, i hope you find them as valuable as i did.
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Jun 24, 2019 20:36
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